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Dambrot says 'yes' to Duquesne this time


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They offered him more money and a good stepping stone to the national stage. They apparently wanted him BADLY and he could have probably pumped them for more money if he really wanted it.

The only real benefit to him at Akron is that he could probably survive a couple of bad seasons since we know what we have in him.

He may have missed his golden opportunity.

On the other hand, we hope that golden opportunity resides right here and he finds it.

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So, you guys consider Duquesne "big time"?

Duquesne? Not particularly.

The A-10? Yes. Four teams in the tourney.

Also, Duquesne is a very nice school, and Pittsburgh is a first-class city. Nasty in the winter, like here, but really a cool place with a high quality of life. Throw in his dad's history with the school and at least twice the cash he'll probably ever make in Akron, and it's easy to understand his temptation, if you ask me.

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Duquesne? Not particularly.

The A-10? Yes. Four teams in the tourney.

Also, Duquesne is a very nice school, and Pittsburgh is a first-class city. Nasty in the winter, like here, but really a cool place with a high quality of life. Throw in his dad's history with the school and at least twice the cash he'll probably ever make in Akron, and it's easy to understand his temptation, if you ask me.

I think he should hold out for the Iowa State job to open up. That way he can move to a career-ending school in an even better conference.

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Well, as much as I hate to p-o the "glass half-empty" crowd, Keith Dambrot is still the coach of our alma mater, and I give him all the support I can. No other coach in the MAC is as highly regarded, and none is as loyal as Keith. And, I might add -- his comment about his value on the market forcing the university to further invest in the program shows his moxy. Perhaps he's sacrificing some of his own well-earned credits for the sake of the team. The guy does still own the school record for HBP, doesn't he? ;)

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At the very least, let this serve as a reality check for some of the naive people on this board who always like to use the words "He's not going anywhere" when describing the situation of anyone in the coaching profession.

Are you kidding? iCoach got a job. At a whole lot more money than I will ever make.

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At this point, It doesn't matter if KD made the right decision staying here or not, it doesn't matter if Duquesne is a better place than Akron or not, all what matters is that he decided to stay here for whatever reason. So hy on earth is he making those comments? :wall: will these comments help him with recruiting? how about ticket sales next year?? :chair:

It seems that Lebron James and KD have the same PR advisors.

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I feel like he wanted this to be a "warning" towards the university and athletic department, that if you keep hyping up football that has only averaged a little over 1 win the past three seasons, and all I'm doing is getting us to the MAC Championship game every year giving us an opportunity to make it to the Big Dnace. Why should I stick around?

It's really sad how it's treated. Football gets marketed to death, while I know for a fact that A LOT of my classmates I've had don't even know when the next basketball game is because they don't know where to look, or don't see any signs for it except for the big games, which are always advertised.

The biggest thing that gets me is that why is the rec center closed during the football games? If you're making it closed during football games, you should close it for men's basketball, too. And then the can of worms open up...but it's already halfway open...

I would be mad too if the place I coached at has better facilities for football who only has 1 or 2 wins a season, while I'm one of TWO programs in DI college basketball, that has the program in our conference championship game in six consecutive seasons. So you would think that I would be playing in a nice facility, right? Nope...playing in basically a high school gym...

I have no problem to what Dambrot said as long as he made sure the players knew that he wasn't going to leave, and just said that stuff to give a warning out to the university/athletic department, that they need to start making this program one of their priorities. In scale of department's priority in athletic sports, it seems 1) Football, 2) Soccer, 3) Basketball.

Dambrot could almost make an argument that Baseball is three over Basketball because they get to play at Canal Park which is equivalent to Infocision...

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Here's my take on this:

KD has deep family connections to two schools -- UA and Duquesne -- that would cause him to consider coaching for either to be more special than for other schools.

He's already proven he can turn the UA basketball program into a consistent winner.

Duquesne offers a bigger challenge because it's in a tougher conference, and Duquesne has made a commitment to raising the level of its basketball program and is putting money behind it, including offering KD a lot more money than he makes at UA.

KD needed proof that UA was also willing to commit to raising the level of its basketball program, including such possibilities as a new arena, a more prestigious conference and more respect for the coaching staff (including monetary rewards).

KD's decision to remain at UA was largely based on the point above, which means that he did get assurances from UA that the school is even more committed to raising the level of its basketball program than Duquesne.

KD basically acknowledged all of this in the newspaper interview, and the reporter slanted the story to the local (Duquesne) audience.

So what's the take away for Zips fans, players, recruits, etc.?

That UA has a brighter basketball future than Duquesne even though Duquesne is currently in a more prestigious conference than UA and is committed to raising the level of its basketball program.

I see no downside to anything KD said in that story.

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It's really sad how it's treated. Football gets marketed to death, while I know for a fact that A LOT of my classmates I've had don't even know when the next basketball game is because they don't know where to look, or don't see any signs for it except for the big games, which are always advertised.

GoZips.com

Do your friends really not know where to look? Or, are the just too lazy to look? Do they not know how to use Google? I live four states away and know when every game is with little effort on my part. It's 2012. I find it almost impossible to believe that if someone wanted to go to a game, they couldn't find out when the next one was going to be within a few minutes.

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GoZips.com Do your friends really not know where to look? Or, are the just too lazy to look?
I stopped reading after the joke "football gets marketed to death." Now that's a funny one. You can add every basketball game to your electronic calendar with one click by downloading the ical file here. If you watched Zips Basketball with Keith Dambrot on STO on Mondays, they tell you when EVERY upcoming game is for the week, then they replay the show four more times. If you can't figure out when the basketball games are, your really not that much of a fan IMO.
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Compared to the other sports, Football gets the most advertisement; HANDS DOWN. That's what i meant "market to death". It also doesn't help that I have a few ideas, that I kind of just coordinated with football, and just combined it with what actually gets marketed. I made a mistake...shocking, i know :rolleyes: ...especially at eight in the morning...

What I mean they don't know where to go, they don't even know gozips.com exists...that's how bad marketing/advertising is...It is getting better, but it's still really bad...

And they do know within minutes, they ask me. What's wrong with that? Other than them having to here me talk to them where they're wanting to sit, what their thoughts of it are, etc.

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Compared to the other sports, Football gets the most advertisement; HANDS DOWN. That's what i meant "market to death". It also doesn't help that I have a few ideas, that I kind of just coordinated with football, and just combined it with what actually gets marketed. I made a mistake...shocking, i know :rolleyes: ...especially at eight in the morning...

What I mean they don't know where to go, they don't even know gozips.com exists...that's how bad marketing/advertising is...It is getting better, but it's still really bad...

And they do know within minutes, they ask me. What's wrong with that? Other than them having to here me talk to them where they're wanting to sit, what their thoughts of it are, etc.

Any student fan that doesn't know that GoZips.com exists is living under a rock. It's on documents during new student orientation, on banners around campus, etc. I don't mind constructive criticism about the athletic office's outreach to fans, but not knowing about the website is not a legitimate complaint.

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  • 7 months later...
Wonder how bitter the Duquesne fans are now? They've won 8 games all year, and only 1 in the conference.

Don't take this as a jab against KD, but I don't think that he would have done much better had he taken that job.

Taking on a team as bad as Duquesne was, in a conference as competitive as the A10, I don't think even Phil Jackson could have won more in his first year.

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Don't take this as a jab against KD, but I don't think that he would have done much better had he taken that job.

Taking on a team as bad as Duquesne was, in a conference as competitive as the A10, I don't think even Phil Jackson could have won more in his first year.

I agree. I think his success early at UA was a result of the Joyce and Travis class and it helped build a successful program. It would be tough to get recruits to a school with a dying athletic program like Duquesne.

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